You are now listening to cryptid cocktail party
You Welcome back everyone to another episode
of Crypto Cocktail Party, a show where we have
a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive
into the unknown. I'm your host Dave. Sarge,
unfortunately, is not with us this week. He's
in Puerto Rico doing what I don't actually know,
but we have a very special... fill -in host forum
brendan store of the ghost story guys what's
going on man hey man it's good to be back i uh
i i have noticed the two times i've been here
sarge has been curiously absent i'm sure is totally
coincidental and not at all uh proof of some
kind of some kind of bone deep hatred that's
cool no it's uh it's it might be just you know
i you're a good phil a good stand -in to be honest
i completely forgot he was going to be gone this
weekend when i asked you to join us Stunt Sarge.
So you can always count on me. I appreciate that,
man. But how's it going? You looking good? Feeling
good, I hope? Thank you. I mean, as soon as it
stops fucking snowing, yeah, I'll be great, man.
I was telling you, I'm done. I drove into Toronto
last night with a friend to go hang out, and
it's been clear as anything. It was clear the
whole way in. The last half hour of the drive,
just complete white -out conditions. And I...
I woke up to more snow on the ground. I'm just
not going outside today. I just refuse. This
is my protest against God and all his angels.
Going outside is overrated anyways. I mean, you
don't really have to do it. You mean DoorDash
exists? Uber Eats exists? You don't have to leave
for anything now. Believe me, I know that DoorDash
exists. So does my bank account. Good Lord. I
found a pizza joint I really like that has these
great wings, and it's been bad, man. I'm on first
-name basis with the delivery driver. That's
never a good sign. But, I mean, they could hook
you up with free wings at some point. That rapport
is really important for future food deliveries.
Well, you'd think, but my order last time came
with two cans of Diet Pepsi, which is hilarious,
I know. But I went to drink one, and I swear
to God, it tasted like poison. I spat it in the
sink, and I thought, Jesus, is this what I've
been drinking this whole time? Well, check the
bottom. It's expired by almost a year. Oh, God.
So they're clearly thinking, look, the human
trash can will eat anything we send him. So let's
just get rid of this shit by feeding it to him,
and he'll never know the difference. Oh, I hope
that's not the case. I hope it's not the case,
too. I do like their food. Anyway. Real quick,
though, I just realized that, like, you've seen
WALL -E, right? The Disney movie WALL -E? Oh,
yeah. I feel like with the invention of like
DoorDash and Uber Eats and basically Amazon,
I feel like we're slowly becoming that society,
like the human society. We're going to be on
floating chairs. We don't have to do anything.
We're just – everything is at our fingertips.
Why go outside? All these jackasses using AI
to write shit. Yeah, no, it's not good. It's
not good, man. It's all – I guess I think it's
cute. to be optimistic enough to think we'll
get to the space -faring civilization before
it all collapses. It's fair. I think WALL -E,
at the point we are now, WALL -E is wildly optimistic.
Okay. All right. We'll just be more like Idiocracy.
More? Like Idiocracy? More -er. I guess Ow My
Balls hasn't quite happened yet, but there is
a new jackass movie coming, so. This is true.
All right, Brad. So this week. Not to just dive
right in, but we're going to dive right in. So
this week, I am breaking the one rule that I've
always had for this podcast, but I decided I'm
going to give the people what they want. And
this week, we are going to be covering Bigfoot.
Oh, you've thrown me to the wolves, Dave. Bigfoot?
Oh, Lord. I mean, I guess if we'd had Paul here,
if things had worked out, that would have been
better because I can lean on him for knowing
things the way I usually do. But, oh, boy. Well,
here's the thing. I don't. believe in bigfoot
i think he's boring i think it's uh just just
i don't know it just seems how do i word this
hmm i don't know i just yeah i just don't like
bigfoot that's the best i just don't like him
he lent i lent him 12 in 1997 he still keeps
ducking me whenever i see him on the street yeah
there's just something about bigfoot that to
me the reason why i don't is that it's one of
those cryptids where I feel like the explanations,
but like the goalposts for why and what it is
just seems to shift. Like, oh, we don't have
any bodies. Well, that's because it's no longer
flesh and blood. It's interdimensional. And when
they die, the bodies get to, you know what I
mean? Like, I will get into it. We're going to
get into it because I did kind of go it. But
I take it you're familiar with Bigfoot? I am
familiar with Bigfoot. When I wrote my book,
Strangely, I'm kind of like you. I'm not really
a Bigfoot believer exactly. I've spoken to people,
people whose judgment I trust, who have told
me they've seen something in the woods, woods
with which they are intimately familiar, that
does not make sense to them. So I'm open to that.
I'm open to there being something. But the lore
and all that stuff, I don't know. I'm like you.
Where's the body? Where's the fur? And as we'll
get into it, there are some theories. But it's
that thing where you're answering a question
with a series of questions. Exactly. And so,
like, yeah, I don't know. I have a hard time
with Bigfoot, but again, I've talked to people.
I've seen some stuff myself. I don't know. Well,
and I guess we should always say this, and I
don't say this before every episode, but I feel
like I should start, is that even if it's something
that I don't believe or we as a show don't believe,
we're not, I believe that they believe you saw
something. Like, I'm not discrediting what you
believe or your experiences. you know but like
my own personal thing i think bigfoot is fucking
bullshit but and if you disagree you should send
all your anger messages to at sarge the destroyer
yes yes uh but uh but before we get into all
like the plaster casts and nokia brick phone
videos we have to rewind a little bit and talk
about something that i think bigfoot enthusiasts
or even like cryptozoology enthusiasts as a whole
seem to forget or they're just kind of like willfully
ignoring And that is that Bigfoot, as we know
him today, didn't just appear out of nowhere.
Across the Pacific Northwest, many indigenous
nations had traditions about wild people, forest
beings, giants, or just a non -human presence
that lived beyond the edge of the village. And
here's the part that most... Bigfoot people don't
seem to understand. Those stories were not zoological
field reports. They were cultural narratives.
They were tied to a place, morality, kinship,
spiritual boundaries. In some traditions, these
beings were dangerous, sure. In others, they
were sort of like a protector. And as we've seen
time and time again, like with the Wendigo or
Skinwalkers, modern cryptozoology tends to take
those stories and go like, see, that's historical
evidence that this shit is... fucking real but
that's all just like a reframing and we here
at cryptic cocktail party have always had like
a strong stance against reframing uh even indigenous
scholars and writers have pointed out that extracting
like those traditions and flattening them down
to proto bigfoot sightings can be kind of reductive
because once you turn a living culture narrative
into nothing more than evidence that bigfoot
is real you kind of strip it of context so Yeah,
the idea of a powerful wild being in the forest
is old. The idea of an undiscovered primate living
in the forests of North America, that's more
modern. I hope that makes sense. That makes total
sense to me. This is one of those, man, if Paul
had been on the show, he'd be coming at you like
a spider monkey. No, I won't say what happened,
why he had to go away, but I'm saying God did
it so he wouldn't kill you. See, I was kind of
hoping he would be here because I need pushback
on this. He would reach into your chest like
Molaram and just pull your heart out beating
through the internet. But this episode, it's
not going to be like a Bigfoot debunking episode.
It's just... We're just going to talk about Bigfoot.
That's all it is. I promise. Put Bigfoot on blast.
So what is Bigfoot? Like the modern version of
Bigfoot. Well, when most people picture Bigfoot,
we all kind of have a very specific creature
in mind, just like a massive upright figure,
usually between seven and nine feet tall, broad
shoulders, long arms, covered head to toe and
dark brown or black hair and built just like
an absolute. brick shithouse uh its face is often
described as human -like but not quite human
kind of like a mix between a human and a primate
with like a heavy brow like a flatter nose and
then of course there's the feet uh large human
-like they usually like according to like some
like the casts that people make they're anywhere
between 14 to 17 inches long so you know he's
big foot Bigfoot's a shower, not a grower is
what we're saying. Yeah, yeah. He's hogged out.
I'm writing that one down. Hogged out. So that's
like the default. Like that's the version of
Bigfoot we all know and love. Like I'm sure that's
the one that if you picture a Bigfoot, that's
what you're seeing like Harry and the Hendersons.
You're not picturing anything different than
that. Every time I'm alone in my room, that's
what I picture. That's what I picture. When I
have a quiet moment with a candle, you see the
candles in the background? Candles are going.
It's me and the foot. So you're a big foot guy?
Hey. Yeah, me and Quentin Tarantino. Great. So
the key thing to remember, though, is that this
version, again, is modern. And we can actually
kind of watch it take shape over time, like how
we got. from where Bigfoot started to where it
is now. So the Bigfoot story, like the modern
Bigfoot story, starts in August of 1958 when
a road construction crew working in the Bluff
Creek area of Northern California began finding
large footprints around their job site. The prints
looked like bare human footprints, but much larger
than the average foot. Again, it was like around
16, 17 inches long. One of the crew members,
Jerry Crew, which is fucking... That's a great
name for a crew member. J. Crew? J. Crew. Come
on. What is this usual suspect's ass story? So
he took it upon himself to make plaster casts
of the tracks and brought them to the Humboldt
Times, a newspaper based out of Eureka, California.
And on October 6th, 1958, editor for the Times,
Andrew Gonzoli, ran a front page story about
the mysterious prints. And it's actually from
this article that the name Bigfoot originates
from. They used it once. And then the name just
kind of stuck. So once that article was published,
the story didn't stay local very long. Wire services
picked it up. And within weeks, like news outlets
all over the country were running their own version
of the Bluff Creek footprint story. And by the
end of 1958, Bigfoot was full on. national news
then just about like nine around nine years later
on october 20th 1967 roger patterson and bob
gimlin were horseback riding along bluff creek
in the same kind of general region that the original
prints were discovered and as they were coming
around a bend they saw a large humanoid figure
walking across the sandbar now patterson a self
-proclaimed sasquatch enthusiast just so happened
to have a 16 millimeter camera with them so he
dismounted and began filming Now, the footage
is short, just under a minute. We've all seen
it. We've all seen the Patterson Gable footage.
But in it, you can clearly see a large, upright,
hair -covered figure walking left to right across
the open creek bed with a steady, almost confident
stride, kind of like a man about town. He knew
where he was going. Like an Italian man whose
mother had just called him to supper. Exactly.
It has long arms that swing down past its hips,
broad shoulders, a thick torso, and about halfway
through the clip, the Bigfoot takes a brief look
back over its shoulder towards the camera, and
it's kind of sexy, not going to lie. Finally,
someone says it. It's a very come -hither look,
I feel like, but that might just be me. Now,
this single piece of footage, again, we've all
seen it. It became like... literally iconic it
is the definitive bigfoot video if there ever
was one and that one frame of it looking back
has gotten reproduced so many times books documentaries
merchandise i'm probably going to use it for
the art for this episode if i'm going to be 100
honest with you and uh that silhouette of that
still of that bigfoot walking uh is basically
like the cryptid equivalent of like the nike
swoosh or adidas logo it's like it's like one
of the most recognizable symbols in the world
so you're you're so the patterson gimlet like
do you remember like the first time you ever
saw that were you like did you see it and were
you like that's up i don't i must have seen it
at some point but i don't have any recollection
of when my my sort of interest in bigfoot any
passing interest as i mentioned was when i started
researching my book a strange little place because
i grew up in a town in the pacific well sort
of in the Pacific Northwest, more in the sort
of central British Columbia or eastern British
Columbia, but it's heavily forested. And I talked
to a couple of folks who had stories of, none
of them used the word Bigfoot, but that's what
they were describing. But prior to that, I don't
know. I probably thought on Unsolved Mysteries
as a kid. If I had to guess, that's probably
when I first saw it. Honestly, I think that might
be the first time I ever saw it. It's definitely...
one of those like early childhood, like I was
watching like sci -fi and there was some documentary
or some sort of like unsolved mystery show like
that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a wild piece
of footage. I'm not going to lie. A hundred percent.
I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's striking. And
you know, I know I'm sure you're going to cover
it. Like people have a million people have claimed
credit. for it or for the suit. And I would,
because that sounds like a fun gag. And it's
not impossible that someone would pull a prank
like that. I know everyone says, why would someone
go out in the woods to fuck with somebody else?
But I actually know a guy through a friend who
does just that. He goes out into the woods and
just fucks with people. Not in a Bigfoot costume,
but he'll build things. He's an incredibly skilled
creator of things. And he will build elaborate
looking monsters. put them in the woods for people
to drive past once and the second one person
drives past it and you hear like the brakes screech
or whatever and he just goes grabs it takes it
away and so someone's gonna have a story about
you know the jamungo monster and it's just this
guy getting his jollies that is so good yeah
great that is such a good prank i love dude and
his is so good it's so it would fool anyone his
stuff is incredible he uh Yeah, I can't say who
it is, but he's incredibly gifted, and he's a
real bastard. No, that's amazing. I don't know
who it is, but I have the most respect for that
man. Now, whether that film shows an undiscovered
primate or just a man in a costume, we're not
here to debate that. What matters is the cultural
effect it had. It standardized Bigfoot. From
this point forward, most modern Bigfoot descriptions
all started sounding Pretty similar. Hairy, upright,
long -armed, walking with that very familiar
gait. So before 1967, Bigfoot was mostly just
footprints and stories. Now he has a body. And
once you give something a frame of reference
like a body... And what a body. People start
measuring everything against that. So from this
point on, when someone says they saw Bigfoot,
they aren't describing some vague wild man in
the woods. They're describing something that
either looks like that film or doesn't. And this
is where things start getting fun because as
sightings started coming in from outside of Northern
California, the creature kind of started shifting.
It's still Bigfoot, but sometimes it's shorter,
bulkier. Sometimes it's white or has glowing
eyes. Sometimes it smells so bad it becomes its
defining feature. I mean, the silhouette stays
the same, just some of the details don't because
once you start getting reports from a bunch of
different states, Bigfoot becomes sort of like
an accent. distinct to that specific region and
that's where we get into regional bigfoot variants
you ready to dive into some of these oh yes i
yeah i am i am ready i love the idea of cajun
bigfoot he's just got a piece of straw clamp
between his teeth and he's playing a jug i'm
all for this you're not far off so so first up
we got florida's skunk ape this one Still upright,
still hairy, but with a few small differences.
This guy's usually found in thick swamps, palmetto
scrubs, just like your typical Everglades -type
terrain. He's a bit shorter, usually clocking
in at about 7 feet tall -ish, and has more of
a reddish -brown or orange -colored fur instead
of the normal brown or darker colors you would
find on your standard Squatch. But, as I'm sure
you can tell by the name, his defining trait
is that he's a very stinky boy. I was going to
say, all the blow he's doing down in Florida,
he doesn't have time to shower. Witnesses have
described its smell as rotting garbage, dead
fish, skunk spray, sulfur, and wet dog that has
been just baking in the heat and humidity. So
it's not one or the other. It's all those, but
hot. Sounds like the Gulf Coast to me, brother.
Then we got the Ohio Grassman. This is just corn
-fed Bigfoot. It's not much different. He's voting
against his interests. Yeah. It's not any different
than Bigfoot. He's just more of a dickhead, I
guess, in the sense that most of the reports
talk about it throwing rocks and being very aggressive.
Then you have the Moglin Monster from Arizona.
This is just desert Bigfoot. This one's described
as about seven feet tall, covered in dark hair.
But one recurring detail is that this one has,
like, bright red eyes and a lot of the stories
emphasize rock throwing and intimidation behaviors
which leads me to believe he is also a dickhead
and he smells real bad too he that's another
thing he smells like rotting meat not great um
and there are like a million of these regional
variants and then there's like regional variants
off the regional variants like the ohio grass
man there's a version of that called orange eyes,
which is just the same thing, but with glowing
orange eyes. So they get like even more niche
and weird as you go down. You got, are we going
to cover blue eyes? No, no, we're not going to
cover old blue eyes. Okay. Cause blue, cause
blue, blue eyes is a great story. Look it up.
We actually did an episode on it for, uh, for
ghost story guys. It's, uh, it's 1974. Allegedly
this creature terrorized Edwards air force base.
So, uh, yeah, go, go check out old blue, go check
out the legend of blue eyes and ghost story guys.
Oh, so we're not talking about... No, not Frank
Sinatra terrorizing Southern California. He did
that in a different way. My favorite... You thought
I was making a Sinatra joke. I thought you were
making a Sinatra joke first. No, no, no. But
there is a great... Jackie Mason was terrorized
by Old Blue Eyes. I believe that. There's a great
joke that the comedian Jackie Mason used to keep
making fun of Frank Sinatra because he was dating
Mia Farrow, who was way, way younger. And Jackie
Mason... And Sinatra went up to him and basically
said, hey, this should stop. And Jackie Mason,
of course, went, go fuck yourself. And he'd make
jokes like Frank takes off his toupee, Mia has
her mom brush her hair, he brushes his teeth,
or she brushes her teeth, he takes out his dentures.
And finally, I think someone broke Mason's jaw.
Jesus Christ. And then they fired, I think first
they fired some shots into his hotel room. And
he made that part of his act. He's like, I don't
know who it was, but I heard the guy going doobie
doobie doo as he walked away. So I have my suspicions.
And then I think someone busted his jaw. And
I think that was the end of the Sinatra jokes,
which would do it for me. Yeah. But that also
does sound like he's terrorizing. Southern California.
Just like Blue Eyes at Edwards Air Force Base.
But I'm not familiar with that story, but now
I'm definitely going to have to look that up
because that sounds fun as shit. But there's
a million of these. But the last one I'll go
over with you is one from your neck of the woods,
kind of. And that's that's that's old yellow
top from Ontario. He is sweet. This is described
as a large, dark hair covered figure. But just
that the fur is blonde around its head. That's
the only difference. So it's just a really hairy
hockey, bro. There's Italians out there who look
like that. Yeah, pretty much. They're everywhere.
They will also fire shots into your door if you
pick them up. I've learned this. Well, I'm going
to try to avoid that. I walked into a bar and
some Russian gangsters walked in. I was like,
well, time to go. Time to go. Yeah, but just
start talking about hockey. You'll be fine. It'll
be like a heated rival situation. No, I don't
want that either. I've seen that show. No, I'm
not interested. Hard pass. All right, all right,
all right. So, so far, these regional variants
of Bigfoot are still Bigfoot. They're just different.
They smell different. They got different height,
different eye colors. Still Bigfoot, but with
a little bit of, like, environmental remixing,
I guess. But here's where shit gets weird, because
eventually they stop just being Bigfoot and turn
into something else entirely, like a whole new
genre of Sasquatch, if you will. Take, for instance,
the sheep squash of West Virginia. Now, this
thing sucks. It's around seven to eight feet
tall. It's got thick white wool -like fur, clawed
hands, cloven feet, ram horns, and the face of
a goat, but with razor -sharp teeth. This is
the Liberace of Sasquatch. This is very scary.
It's not great. And then there's bat squash out
of Washington. This one was sighted around when
Mount St. Helens exploded. Basically, it's Bigfoot,
but with glowing red eyes and large leathery
bat wings with a 20 -foot wingspan. So it's a
flying Bigfoot. Pretty shitty. I want to run
the numbers on that, on the viability of a 400
-pound creature, but he's got 20 -feet wings.
I don't fucking care. I admit that doesn't work.
Well, you know what? It could. Who's to say it
can't? That's true. and other that's it we're
podcasters dave we don't know jack shit about
science and then there's the dog man while not
technically a bigfoot it always seems to be like
in the conversation of bigfoots and it's described
exactly as it sounds it's a seven foot tall upright
wolf it's got a wolf's head muscular body long
arms and it's got those weird backwards dog knees
it's it's a bummer All around. I do love that.
There's such a sharp demarcation in the stories
about Sasquatch versus Dogman. Generally speaking,
Sasquatch is pretty benign, or if it's really
mean, it's like Chuck and Rock's at you. But
Dogman is almost invariably a prick of the highest
order. Yeah. I honestly forget. I don't know
if we covered this. I already forget what we've
already covered or if I wanted to, but it was
the Bigfoot, not the Bigfoot, the Dogman Massacre,
the one that they say took place in that trailer
around the woods and it just murdered a whole
family. Oh, I haven't heard about this. Oh, yeah.
It's fucking wild. I think we covered it. Again,
I don't know what we've covered and what we haven't
yet. That's what happens, Dave. You do this long
enough, you forget anything you've talked about.
Your listeners will be like, no, remember this
episode? You'll be like, man, I love you, but
I don't. I don't at all. It's not because I don't
care. It's because I've done so many of these,
I cannot possibly keep it all in my head and
still remember to blow my nose. There's a limit
of functionality. I find I start forgetting things
that we've covered and also the details. People
ask me, oh, you covered this, but I'm sure I
said that. I agree with you. It's with these
other types of squatches that the quote -unquote
undiscovered primate idea kind of starts to strain.
Because now we aren't just talking about hair
color and height differences. We're talking about
entirely different creatures occupying the same
space as Bigfoot. And once that happens, the
explanations for what a Bigfoot is, they kind
of have to start stretching too. Because up until
this point, even with the regional remixing,
we're still basically talking about an undiscovered
animal. a big, hairy, maybe aggressive, maybe
spelly animal, but it's still something biological.
But when you start sharing the same forests with
upright wolves, horned wool monsters, and flying
primates, that like, quote -unquote, relictominid
idea, it kind of starts to crack. It doesn't
break immediately, but it's starting to bend,
and that bend is happening under a lot of pressure.
Because since 1958, Bigfoot has lived in this...
Kind of like this weird middle ground, I guess.
I don't know. It's like there's been like thousands
of sightings, plaster casts. There's, you know,
the footage. There's conferences, databases,
entire TV shows built around finding this fucking
thing. But yet, no body. There's no skeleton,
no skull, no specimen. You know, there's no like
broadly accepted. dna sequence like for almost
70 years now bigfoot has existed as something
constantly reported on but never definitively
captured i guess like a successful republican
economic policy exactly there has been attempts
to kind of do that like in the early 2000s i
don't know if i remember this happened i don't
know if you do there was the sasquatch genome
project where they They claimed that they sequenced
Bigfoot's DNA. It got a lot of attention, but
it also did get a lot of pushback. Shock. It's
kind of fucked up. But it was mostly over the
methodology and publication standards. I guess
not so much about the actual DNA. But it never
gained... You're telling me the Sasquatch Genome
Project doesn't have rock -solid scientific methods
established? I am shocked by this. This is a
really left -field allegation. I hope you can
back this up. Well, I mean, it never gained any
acceptance mainstream. We could not have foreseen
this. Yeah, yeah. And then other hair analysis,
like, over the years, they reportedly identified
possible Bigfoot samples, but they were just,
like, bear, cattle, wildlife. Nothing crazy.
And then there's also, like, okay, we don't have
DNA. Why don't we have any, like, fucking pictures
of this thing? Like, we live in an era where...
trail cameras are everywhere like hunters have
them up year round like wildlife researchers
use them constantly you know we all have fucking
a high resolution 4k camera in our pockets there's
also thermal optics drones night vision and yet
the most compelling visual evidence we have is
just that one minute of film from 1967 well you
have never played a game of hide and seek against
the sasquatch is what i'm hearing because those
guys are Great. They've been known to be elusive.
That's it. That's it. There could be one inside
you right now. Okay, no, you wouldn't know because,
as we said, he's hogged out. But he could be
right behind you and you'd have no idea. This
is very true. And there might be reasons for
that, which we'll get into. But it's the lack
of evidence. It doesn't make any of this go away.
Like we were talking about earlier, it just moves
the goalpost. for why there's no evidence for
you know for some to be fair for some researchers
the answer is still like biological they're just
extremely rare extremely intelligent and avoids
humans and it lives in the forest it's like one
of the most remote terrain anywhere for others
uh especially as time goes on and there's lack
of evidence You know, that idea kind of shifts.
Bigfoot isn't just elusive. It's fucking super
elusive. It appears. It disappears. It's seen
in conjunction a lot of times like UFO reports.
It seems that it can. And I got to tell you.
Sorry, just to jump in. Yeah. The flesh and blood
Bigfoot guys fucking hate it when you talk about
that. When you mention that Bigfoot is seen in
conjunction with anything paranormal, they hate.
You could give them a statement. You could show
them a photo of Bigfoot rappelling down from
a UFO like SEAL Team 6, and they would burn it
the second they got it out of your hands. Rather
than accept that, no, this isn't some kind of
non -terrestrial creature, they would sooner
destroy it and then set your house on fire. They
hate that shit. Yeah, I can understand why. Because
it's kind of goofy. Has my whole life been a
lie? My wife divorced me for no good reason?
Oh, no. I've wasted my whole life. Yeah, it just
seems like nowadays Bigfoot feels less like an
animal and more like a paranormal thing, I guess.
And the idea isn't anything super new. It's kind
of gained a lot more traction, like the interdimensional
thing, the psychic abilities, the ability to
blur. Not blur. That's a bad way to word that.
is that the reason why it's so blurry is because
it's interdimensional and it's in between planes
or it can affect your... There's a lot of it,
but it's not new. Writers in the 1970s were already
kind of suggesting that cryptids and UFOs might
not be separate categories. Yeah, John Keel was
talking about that back in the 70s. Yeah, yeah.
Later researchers documented cases, again, where
Bigfoot sightings and UFO activity... like, clustered
in the same way. Like, there's the whole, like,
UFO Bigfoot flap in Pennsylvania that happened.
But, yeah, by the 2000s and 2010s, that's when,
like, the full high strangeness argument started
to really, like, come through. Like, Bigfoot
may be interdimensional, capable of cloaking,
or operating outside, like, normal animal constraints.
And then at the same time, other researchers,
like you said, push back against that super fucking
hard. Because they think that once you leave
the biological model entirely, you're not in
zoology or even cryptozoology anymore. This is
something completely new. They spent their kids'
college fund on thermal cameras for no reason.
Yeah. So within the Bigfoot world itself, like
you said, there's a huge split between the two
groups. There's the flesh and blood versus the
paranormal. And by 2026... Bigfoot kind of exists
on a spectrum now, especially when it comes to
the explanations. I get you, Bigfoot. Me too.
But yeah, it's like, and they're not just like
for what it is, but like the explanations trying
to account for like the evidence problems, I
guess. It's a creature that is constantly being
reported and culturally dominant, but never conclusively
given any sort of like true concrete evidence.
You know, maybe that's why Bigfoot. still persists
today maybe that's why people still love the
idea of a bigfoot like we can literally watch
it evolve from where it was in 1958 to a filmed
body in 1967 to just regional swamp guys and
fucking interdimensional beasts in 2026 whether
bigfoot exists i don't know i Don't believe he
does. But I mean, in the end, maybe that doesn't
really matter. Maybe it's just the fun of like
figuring out what or who it is or fucking what's
going on. But whatever it is, animal. Maybe the
real Bigfoot is the friends we made along the
way. Exactly. And I didn't really write an ending
to this script. I kind of ended it after that.
So I guess on that note, that's the end of the
episode. Well, I want to shout out a couple things,
which I think would be great cappers to this.
So first off, folks, if you want a killer action
horror novel about Bigfoot, which is a ton of
fun, Rogue by Luke Phillips. It is so good. It
sort of presents, and he clearly has such a comprehensive
understanding of all the different theories and
all that shit. So Luke just wrote this huge,
thick brick of an action novel about this insane
Bigfoot killing people in the Pacific Northwest
and being hunted down both by other Bigfoot and
by some kind of government hit squad. And then
it's all nuts and bolts, but he comes up with
all these fantastic explanations. And again,
it's just an action novel. It's not advocating
for one thing or another, but it's a great story.
And then there's the film. It's got a couple
different names, but it's either The Vice Guide
to Bigfoot or 15 Things You Didn't Know About
Bigfoot. Number one will surprise you. It is
so fucking good. It's a found footage comedy
about this. Really up his own ass. Well, it's
Compound. It's meant to be Vice, but it's Compound.
He's a reporter. He thinks he belongs in war
zones. He's sent by Compound or Vice to cover
a Bigfoot festival. And he hates everything about
it. And it is so very funny. It's so fucking
good. I think the director only made the one
film, but it is brilliant. Hell yeah. I'll definitely
check out both of those because both of those
sound a lot of fun. So, yeah, Brendan, how are
you feeling? Like I said, this episode really
wasn't about anything. I just wanted to talk
about Bigfoot and the different variants of Bigfoot.
I mean, I know so little about Bigfoot. I shouldn't
say that. I know a lot about Bigfoot or the legends
of Bigfoot. And I know that every country has
their version. There's the Yowie. There's the
Yarin. The Yowie's in Australia. The Yarin's,
I think, in China. You got the Yeti. the yeti
of course yeah yeah yeah um but like i said do
i believe in it i don't know i've never i've
never seen anything like it i have seen something
weird that is was big and okay this sounds bad
it's big and black but not like that um but i
saw something weird in the trees once something
i still i don't have an explanation for it yeah
i'm not saying it was a bigfoot because i didn't
see anything like that but What I saw doesn't
make any sense. And as I said, I've talked to
guys I went to school with, guys I trust, one
of whom was a forester. And he saw something
out in the woods while he was driving to work
one morning. And he's like, it's not a bear.
It's not a deer. It's not anything else that
lives around here. I'm not saying it was a Sasquatch.
He said, I'm just saying whatever this thing
was, I can't tell you what it was. And I know
pretty much everything out there. So who knows?
Who knows? That's the thing, right? I'm fascinated
by it. I think people chase Bigfoot because it's
like, it's sort of like the Moby Dick of all
this shit, right? Because a lot of us need this
shit to be real, right? I was joking about, like,
my life has been a waste, but that's actually
kind of not a joke for some of these guys. Some
of these guys, like, I know dudes, they're constantly
putting out fucking documentary series about
their hunt for Bigfoot. And I get it, man. You
don't like fishing. You want to get out of the
house and feel like you're on a mission. So you
go to the woods, you clap stones together, you
hit sticks on trees. I get it. I get it. I don't
think you're doing anything productive. I don't
think you're investigating anything. I think
this is ghost hunting outside, but go for it.
Yeah. Honestly, ghost hunting outside. I never,
that's a great way to word that. I've never thought
of it like that before. It is essentially just
ghost hunting, but outside. Yeah. You're just,
you're like, did you hear something? I thought
I heard a knock. I thought I heard a, yeah. And
I mean, there are some guys like Travis Watson,
WT Watson. He's actually talked a little bit
about that. He's, he calls it the forest poltergeist,
but he talks about how like some people will
talk about if the shit that happens outside that
everyone says is Bigfoot, if it happens inside,
it's a poltergeist. And so, you know, he talks
about kind of this, this weird crossover where
we need this shit to be the things we say we
are because we'd like to tell ourselves stories.
But. You know, odds are if any of it is true
in any kind of way, if anyone is actually seeing
something and they're perceiving it as a Bigfoot
or whatever the fuck, it's only because we need
to make sense of the thing we're seeing. Like
I said, the thing I saw, I could lie. I could
tell you I saw a Bigfoot stepping behind a tree.
But that's not what I saw. I saw something completely
different. I don't know. I won't. It's your show.
So if you want to hear the story, I'll tell you.
But otherwise, that's fine. But yeah, so it's
like, but a lot of people need that. A lot of
people need to say, well, it's, you know, I saw
Class B, Class B, both the guys, clearly, you
know, from, he had a little bit of blonde hair,
so I think he was from Ohio. Yeah. You know,
he talked a lot about, I don't know, I can't
think of any specific Ohio references. He talked
a lot about that shit in Chile they have in Cincinnati.
That's literally all the Ohio jokes I got. That
and the terrible hot dog place I went to in Toledo.
But yeah, so I think it's a 800 -pound gorilla
because it is the most symbolic. You talk about
that shape. It's the thing. And if you find that,
maybe the rest of it's true too. And if you find
that, maybe you're the guy. You're the guy who
found it. You know? And all this, again, I'm
kind of being an asshole, but I'm kind of not.
Like, all this shit, all this time you put into,
like, I don't have a lot of friends. You know?
I didn't get invited to prom. You know? But I
found Bigfoot. So fuck you. It would be a very
redeeming thing to be the guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's like if Elon Musk ever did a single useful
thing. It would just be like, oh, my God. It
would make it all worth it. Yeah. Well, maybe
not in that case. No, I get it. I can think of
the single useful thing he could do, but that's
probably we shouldn't say that on the show. But,
yeah, no, I do think there's an element to that.
It's the big symbol. Yeah. And so if you find
it, you did it. And, again, if you find it, maybe
all this other shit is real, and if all this
other shit is real, maybe we don't die when we
die. And I think that's ultimately what it comes
down to. Not to be a bummer, but I think that's
what it comes down to. I get what you're saying.
I got you. All right. That's right. We're bringing
it back to the eternal question of death. I just
ruined the mood. Merry Christmas, everybody.
We all die someday. That's the perfect way to
end this. All right. All right. Well. Thank you
so much for coming on. I appreciate it. You taking
the time. I know you got to run soon, so I guess
we'll wrap this up real quick. You got anything
you want to plug before we sign off where people
can find you, listen to you, all that good stuff?
Yeah, you can find the Ghost Story Guys everywhere
fine podcasts live. I also co -write a horror
fiction podcast called Fear Daily. So you can
find Fear Daily everywhere podcasts live. And
if you want to follow me on social media, I'm
largely the truth on Threads, Instagram, Blue
Sky. And we can nerd it up about movies over
on Letterboxd. Hell yeah. And if you want to
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Please leave us a five -star rating and review.
It really helps the show. you know, getting to
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worded, uh, emails you want to send me about
this episode, please do a cryptic cocktail at
gmail .com. And I think with that out of the
way, that's, that's all we got. You're not normally
Sarge says goodbye. And I love it to the audience.
Would you like to fill in for that as well? I'd
be honored audience. Remember we're all going
to die someday. So goodbye. And I love you. Gah!